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Ancient Skull Unearthed in Africa
BrianGa writes "This BBC article reports on
a skull which scientists say is the most important discovery in the search
for the origins of humankind since the first
Australopithecus ape-man remains were found in Africa in the 1920s.
The newly discovered skull finally puts to rest any idea that there might be a single missing link between humans and chimpanzees, they say. Analysis of the
ancient find is not yet complete, but already it is clear that it has an
apparently puzzling combination of modern and ancient features."
They already tried this with a mammoth and ran into some problems and this is with something that died a lot more recent and was in a lot better condition when found. I doubt that they will be able to clone something from this. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/m ammoths000313.html
If someone can tell me how to make an acutal link I'd appreciate it.
On a more serious note, seeing as a human being has already been cloned, would it be too much to expect a clone of this guy or girl? It would only take a tiny amount of good DNA... If it survived.
Unfortunately, DNA simply doesn't survive the fossilization process. The closest they've been able to come is extracting damaged Neandertal DNA, and that specimen was fairly old (40,000 bp if memory serves). Even with that, they had to drill pretty far into the partially fossilized bone to get it. Something on this order is simply not possible.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Not to be rude, but "duh." Even Darwin said that apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor--the only ones who talk about humans descending from apes are horribly misinformed creationists. It's akin to your family tree--unless you live in West Virginia, typically you're not descended from your cousin. From an evolutionary standpoint, modern apes are our cousins, not our ancestors.
Regarding the statement you quoted--the mystery is not that our family tree has branches. That much we know. For example, based on DNA analysis we know that Neandertals were probably a subspecies that died out, not our ancestors--another branch in the tree, you could say. The wonder lies in investigating these branches, and discovering new forks, roots, and origins.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Read 15 Answers to Creationist Nonesense in this month's Scientific American.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
And in the interest of fairness, will moderators be willing to equally mod up the rebuttal to SciAm's article?
Note: posted anonymously so no "karma whore" charge can be leveled on asking for mod-up.
I am deadly serious - you are a complete idiot the way you misread what I have said. Small example:
You quote the horrendously outdated talkorigins.org reference on mDNA. I read it. It had the same problem as the other quote - it was outdated. Let me quote the facts for you again (maybe you will actually read this time):
"A greater surprise, even disbelief, occurred in 1997, when it was announced that mutations in mtDNA occur 20 times more rapidly than previously thought. Mutation rates can now be determined directly by comparing the mtDNA of many mother-child pairs. Using the new, more accurate rate, mitochondrial Eve lived only about 6,000 years ago."
1997!! Your article is dated 1995! It's out of date! Fancy catching an honest evolutionist using outdated information - I thought that was a creationist's habits! And trust me, a 6000 year old mitochondrial Eve is far too young for evolution - Aboriginees in Australia are supposed to have been isolated for at least 40,000 years.
I just had an idea. If we are going to get anywhere...we are going to keep going around in circles unless we put down points of fact and evidence, predictions about what each theory expects to see - then adress them. In this slashdot form it is easy for you to forget explanations I give and then accuse me of doing something I haven't done. So what do you say? Up for the challenge of a formal written debate? It would involve following up some references to make sure that they are being quoted properly and examining each alley properly to make sure the assumptions and conclusions are correct...
Whether or not you agreed with the evidence, I cited at least three pieces for creation:* Evolution of language
* Dust on the moon
* mitochondrial Eve
Read carefully again - You said I quote no evidence. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, but I did give some evidence.
Evolution of language:c esandNotes13.html#1012325
Yeah, because I'm sure that sufferring from internal bleeding, or your blood being unable to clot, has to be beneficial somewhere. Maybe to spray your opponent with blood so he can't see. Seriously though, show me a situation of a bad mutation that may be good, in, for example, the event of a meteor strike. An impossible task, I think. But, just to make it really difficult (and realistic), the mutation has to be beneficial AFTER the fallout finishes, since most of the time of a species is spent during calm times, not the exceptional circumstances of a meteor strike. How about you quote me properly next time huh? I did try to give some evidence which you think you cleverly refuted, and then go on to say I gave no evidence? I have tried to both:http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Referen
And do me a favor of reading it. Bear in mind, if you want to show me counter evidence, make sure it's actual evidence. There's a difference between saying "It may have happened like this" and "From the evidence this seems the most likely way it happened". I don't want anything from the first category - such as the ridiculous stories of how the moon came to be under an evolutionary model.
A) Give evidence of creation
B) Show the irrationality of evolution
So STOP MISREPRESENTING ME!! It doesn't matter if my arguments in your eyes were unreasonable. I still attempted what you accuse me of not attempting. I have at one time given evidence of creation, while at another time given problems with evolution. Get over it! I'm sure you do both too! Eg. "We know the earth is old from dating of fossils" (evidence for evolution), and "Those animals could not have fit on the ark" (argument against creation). Yes, kind of like how two of you just presented outdated arguments of mitochondrial Eve, huh? From a cursory glance, one can see that through natural selection more genetic diversity is lost than is gained. Take a look at humans - we tend to marry people of similar ethnic background. Reduces diversity - and this is in situations where there is no need for us to. That is why people of the same race look similar - there is less diversity, so they show common themes. This could be solved by other races mixing with each other - but that hardly ever happens. There's definately not new diversity being created...but there's certainl reason to believe that we are losing diversity. On the contrary, this fact about mutations makes evolution impossible. I thought I explained this before. If most mutations are recessive, then to express themselves two partners must possess it. For that to happen (and on average the mutation should be lost in two or three generations - 50% chance the first child gets it, 25% the second, 12.5% the third, etc). For two partners to possess it they must have the same recessive beneficial mutation. Meaning that they must be very closely related - the chance of two cousins having the same beneficial mutation is 6.25%, and then 1.56% for second cousins, 0.39% for third cousins having the same beneficial mutation. Now remember, that for every beneficial mutation (presuming that there is such a thing) there are many more harmful mutations. So, any two parents that have a beneficial recessive mutation in common will also have a number of harmful recessive mutations. And the chance of two people having them in common is much greater (because they are more frequent) than having a beneficial mutation. It doesn't matter if recessive mutations are more frequent than dominant ones anyway - according to evolution, beneficial recessive mutations must have occured, since we have many beneficial recessive genes. The problem is, that the process by which these mutations must survive and express themselves, is the very process that destroys them - evidence, cousins and brother/sister marriages are illegal or warned against (depending where you live) because they more frequently produce mutated offspring (in a bad way) than marriage with people distantly related. And for this reason, recessive mutations could never have arisen through the evolutionary model.
Now, I look forward to the many creative ways you will misunderstand what I said, misquote me, show outdated references, etc.
And now, my turn to talk to you lurkers: discussions on forums rarely produce any fruit - go to http://www.creationscience.com for an excellent collection of creationist understanding and check out http://www.talkorigins.org for an evolutionists safe-haven. I ask that you consider the facts carefully - and remember that stories are not fact unless the evidence supports them and opposes all other theories.
Oh, and I just read your fuller explanation of the deck of cards analogy you must be so proud of. If you shuffle a deck of cards there is a 100% chance that it will produce an order. Duh. There is a 0% chance that you will shuffle it into any particular order you specify before the shuffling. This example is horrible - talking about chances of life occurring under an evolutionary model, we are talking about predicting a particular order before it occurs. Saying "this is the only order possible to produce life" then calculating the chance of that order arising. Did you fail statistics? Try it yourself. Predict an order for the cards, then shuffle them and see how many times it takes you to arrive at that order. You work on the presumption that ANY order of proteins, etc, would produce life. That's just silly.
And thinking of the moon Hmm, I'm not sure how much longer I should bother feeding the troll. I'll see whether you reply reasonably this time - or whether you continue to misquote me, not bother to read references, misunderstand me, and pretend you won a great victory when you didn't.
And if you want a real challenge, if you have the time, and you know people who are competent in evolution - and you think it is so convincing, why don't you take up this challenge:h tml
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ413.
I'm sick of evolution. Do me a favor and stop pretending you have so much evidence. I have looked for it. It's not there. If you want evidence for creation I have given you a website, but you continue to ignore it I'm sure and then go on to say "there is no evidence".
Just so you don't miss it:
DON'T YOU DARE EVER SAY CREATION HAS NO EVIDENCE UNTIL YOU READ THIS WEBSITE FULL OF EVIDENCE AND REFERENCES.
http://www.creationscience.com
Do you have a slashdot login name so I can recognise you in the future?
Also, have you been lurking and reading this thread? As you might have guessed, I've found his misrepresentations and unwillingness to examine evidence for a creationist position (while all the time complaining there is no evidence) very frustrating.
He claims there is no evidence. When you say "here is some", he turns his back to you and says "where? I can't see it".
Superb argument. It is equally true that you only find support for evolution on an evolutionists website. And don't quote some dribble about most scientists believing evolution - I have only been made aware of one study of beliefs, and it seems that it's split pretty much down the middle
Read question 4, and follow the footnote for the results of the study. Your hordes of evolutionary counterparts are probably just domestic science teachers and ignorant parents.
Wrong. The mitochondrial "Eve" lived somewhere around 200,000 years ago, according to archaeology.org [archaeology.org]. Shocked?
Arg! You are the second person to give that exact article, and the third person to give an article like that. I'll say to you what I said to the others:
Your article is out of date. A new discovery was made in 1997 that demonstrated mutation rates in mtDNA up to 20 times faster! Your article is dated 1996, therefore was written before this new discovery, therefore outdated! This just gets repetitive and annoying. Here is the article for your reference
Biological evolution has nothing to do with the age of the moon. But anyway, the old chestnut about depth of moon dust has been debunked quite thoroughly. Well, I can't say much of this except that evolutionists appeared to scramble for an argument, by saying that beneath the thin layer of dust is rocks, or by coming up with their own measurements for the intake of dust. I would love to read the article in which the new evolutionist supporting dust intake rates were calculated, and compare it with the creationist ones. You may be interested to read this article.
Wrong. Learn something about dominant and recessive traits. (Are you listening carefully?)
Ooh, great argument, I'm now convinced I was wrong!
Seriously though, where was I wrong about dominant and recessive traits?
However, you've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt one of two things: 1) that you get all your information from creationist tracts, and outdated ones at that or 2) you are a troll.
Unlike you, who gets his information from outdated evolutionist websites